"Gran Dio! the bare memory of that night is a joy," said my friend, walking rapidly up and down the room.
"I had to leave for my Russian home a few days after that, and saw Adelaïde only once; it was the morning of my departure. Her salon was crowded, and she was leaning on her husband's arm, looking very proud and happy. 'Who could have been in that music-room?' I asked myself, while I looked at them; then in an instant I felt reproached at my suspicions, as the thought flashed across my mind, that it might have been her husband. What more likely? I bade her good-bye, and told her, laughingly, as she gave me a cordial grasp of her hand, that I hoped to renew our friendship in St. Petersburg.
"She never wrote to me after that. Marked differences in pursuits and a continued separation will dissolve the outward bonds of the truest friendships. Adelaïde's time was now completely occupied; it was one round of brilliant success for the poor woman. 'Such triumphs! such intoxication!' as Scudo says; but the glory was that of a shooting star. In eight short years after that brilliant season at Venice, Adelaïde Montresor, better known as 'La Malanotte,' the idol of the European musical public, the short-lived infatuation and passion of the celebrated Rossini, was a hopeless invalid, and worse, presque folle.
"I received the news, strange to say, one evening at the opera in St. Petersburg, while I was listening to the music of 'Tancredi.' Two gentlemen were talking behind me, and one was telling the other his recollection of that brilliant scene I have just recounted. Then followed the account of her illness; and I could not restrain myself, as I had in the caffe at Venice; for I had known Adelaïde as a girl, and loved her as a brother. I presented myself, explaining the cause of my interest in their conversation, and found the news was only too true. The gentlemen had just come from Southern Europe, and knew the Montresors personally. He said that her mind was gone, even more hopelessly than her health. She lingered eleven years in this sad state, and then, happily for herself, died."
"And Rossini," I asked,—"how did he take her illness?"
"Oh, three years after his Venetian infatuation, he was off here in Naples, worshipping the Spanish beauty, a little passée to be sure, of La Colbrand. She, however, possessed more lasting attractions than mere physical ones. She had amassed a large fortune in a variety of ways. Rossini was not over-nice; he wanted money most of all things, and he carried off La Colbrand from her cher ami, the Neapolitan director of San Carlo, and married her. It was a regular elopement, as if of a young miss from her papa. Do not look so shocked. Rossini could not help his changeability. You women always throw away a real gem, and receive, nine times out of ten, a mock one in return. But the fault lies not with us, but with you; you almost invariably select the wrong person. Now such men as Montresor and I knew how to return a real gem for Adelaïde's heart-gift; but such men as Rossini have no real feelings in their hearts."
"And you think she loved him?"
"I try to think otherwise, for I cannot bear to remember Adelaïde Montresor as an unworthy woman; and when the unwelcome thought will thrust itself in, I think of her youth, her beauty, her genius, and the sudden blinding effect that rapid prosperity and brilliant success produce on an enthusiastic, warm temperament—Good-morning; to-morrow let me come again, and we will go over 'Tancredi,' and I will sing with you the 'Ah, se de' mali miei.'"
My friend left me alone. I sat by the window, watching the waving of the tasselled branches of the acacia, and the purple fiery vapor that arose from the overflowing Vesuvius; and I thought of Adelaïde Malanotte, and wondered at the strange, fatal necessity attendant on genius, its spiritual labor and pain. Like all things beautiful in Art, made by human hands, it must proceed from toil of brain or heart. It takes fierce heat to purify the gold, and welding beats are needed to mould it into gracious shapes; the sharp chisel must cut into the marble, to fashion by keen, driving blows the fair statue; the fine, piercing instrument, "the little diamond-pointed ill," it is that traces the forms of beauty on the hard onyx. There had been sorrow in the tale of my friend, temptation at least, if not sinful yielding, labor and pain, which had broken down the fair mind itself,—but it had all created a gracious form for the memory to dwell on, an undying association with the "Tancredi," as beautiful, instructive, and joy-giving as the "Divino Amore" of Raphael, the exquisite onyx heads in the "Cabinet of Gems," or that divine prelude the Englishman was at that moment pouring out from his piano in a neighboring palazzo, in a flood of harmony as golden and rich as the wine of Capri, every note of which, we know, had been a life-drop wrung from the proud, breaking heart of Chopin, when he sat alone, that solemn, stormy midnight, in the old convent-chamber at Majorca. But the toil and suffering are forgotten in the enjoyment of creation, and genius itself, when going down into the fiery baptism of sorrow, or walking over the red-hot ploughshares of temptation, would rather take all its suffering and peril than not be itself;—and well it may; for it is making, what poor heart-broken Keats sung,
"A thing of beauty—a joy forever."